Pull out shelves and cabinet door clearance

[Gabriel Marusic]

Keep in mind that the zero protrusion hinges are massive and you will have to allow for the crank of the hinge in the closed and open position. Most people do as mentioned and block-in their pullouts to allow for standard hinges but you do lose that width. You'd be best to do a mockup with a few hinges because some are so close that with very little shim/blocking they will barely clear. We dont use Blum but often times are able to get away without using the zero protrusion.

If you've never used one of the zero protrusion hinges its hard to get your head around how massive they are and while Ive never pushed the limits there is so many parts in one of those hinges I cant imagine they wouldnt sag over time but all the big manufacturers to massive amounts of testing. The other hard part in a pullout situation is you often times have to mount your bottom hinge very high to clear the pullout which puts even more juju on the bottom hinge.

I agree that drawers are a good option if the design allows but these hinges are often used over top of deep fridge cabinets and on uppers.

Thinking a pullout in todays kitchens only applies to base cabs is not really what happens a lot of the time.

Thanks for the feedback on the zero protrusion hinges, I hadn't considered they may be a lot bigger. In the pics they look the same but I definitely don't want a massive hinge in there.

[Gabriel Marusic]

I think there are a lot of instances where a pull out behind doors make sense. Areas where you have something very tall stored with something shorter, areas that you want to keep modular where you could store a stack of something or something tall like a mixer with adjacent items.

Drawers are great and are taking over the world but they do limit you with regards to what can be put in them and when they get massive and deep the drawer itself can often eat half your slide capacity. Doesnt make a lot of sense when you have a super deep pots and pans drawer that can only handle 50% of the slides capacity because the box, front, and hardware, cut your payload in half. Two doors are carried by the hinges and the pullout tray is typically fairly shallow.

This is actually my exact case. I have some very large bins that will be sitting in the base of the cabinet with other things like a mop bucket and then above that there will be 3 pull out shelves holding various sized bins and things like laundry detergent.

[Jim Becker]

Jim,
With two deep drawers, do you feel that the overall volume of the cabinet is well used or, now that you are living with it, would you do three drawers below the undercounter drawer? I'm wrestling with this. It seems you can only stack so many skillets or pans into one drawer...

Thoughts???

I don't keep cookware like pots and pans in the two bottom drawers in the cabinets configured that way...what's in them is bakeware, accessories for the KitchenAid mixer, towels and napkins, etc. They are all full extension and every bit is accessible without issue. I prefer cookware to be accessible in any combination and stacking precludes that. If the ceiling were not only 6'10", I'd have these hanging over the back side of the island, but that would be quite dangerous with the low ceiling. So it's over the spice/herb and wine cabinet.

[Jim Becker]

Sorry, I should've clarified that it's actually for laundry cabinetry and will have some larger boxes within it holding various detergents and stuff like that. The cabinet itself is almost 80" tall and will only have 3 shelves. Granted the bottom of a cabinet is acting as a shelf as well.

For my kitchen however, I'll definitely be doing drawers as it's way more convenient for me.

That makes sense for your application. So the bottom line is that for pull outs that use the maximum width of the cabinet, your doors need to swing completely out of the way. In my island (which was the prototype for the rest of the kitchen) I do have pull outs behind two doors. Mine are inset doors and they have to be fully open for the pull-outs to, um...pull out. That right there made me design the rest of the kitchen to use drawers! And that was back in 2003...

[Peter Stahl]

Gabriel, one thing to consider here. If you have a need for pull-outs, consider doing drawers which are much more efficient and easier to use and don't have the clearance issues that come with pull out drawers behind drawers. There's a reason that many kitchen designs have evolved to be mostly drawers...

Jim, I noticed that on a lot of remodel shows. Now where are the kids going to hide, lol. If I did a fraction of the woodworking I thought about I'd had drawers in my kitchen.

[Jim Becker]

Jim, I noticed that on a lot of remodel shows. Now where are the kids going to hide, lol. If I did a fraction of the woodworking I thought about I'd had drawers in my kitchen.

I was really happy that my daughter's first apartment's little kitchen features primarily drawers. It was so much easier helping her arrange things yesterday.

[Jeff Heil]

We did all drawers on our kitchen project 8 years ago. Love the drawers. Did several larger drawers on the "pantry" cabinet for cereal boxes, oatmeal and other larger items.

The drawer boxes all are 3/4 dovetailed poplar. I did use pre-finished 3/4 birch plywood as the drawer bottoms in the larger (30" and 32") wide drawers for strength. I cut a rabbet in the edges for a 1/2" dado. Used the heavy duty hinges and they are still going strong.

The drawers have served our family well as we use the space. Hope this helps your thoughts and design process.

Here is the post from our project.


http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthre...t=#post2098314